Newmark Advises on $3.4 Billion Joint Venture on One Million-Square-Foot Texas Data Center

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NEW YORK, Oct. 17, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Newmark Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: NMRK) ("Newmark" or "the Company"), a leading commercial real estate advisor and service provider to large institutional investors, global corporations, and other owners and occupiers, announces it served as strategic advisor to Blue Owl Capital, Inc. ("Blue Owl"), Primary Digital Infrastructure and Crusoe Energy Systems LLC ("Crusoe") in a $3.4 billion joint venture ("JV") to fund a purpose-built data center at the Lancium Clean Campus in Abilene, Texas. Newmark's Co-President of Global Debt & Structured Finance Jordan Roeschlaub, Head of Data Center Capital Markets Brent Mayo, Co-Head of Strategic Advisory Andrew Warin and Director of Strategic Advisory Chase Tagen acted as the advisors for the JV.

Newmark Group, Inc. (PRNewsfoto/Newmark Group, Inc.)
Newmark Group, Inc. (PRNewsfoto/Newmark Group, Inc.)

Crusoe will design, build and operate the new 206 megawatt ("MW"), 998,000-square-foot data center. The property will be a build-to-suit, two-building development constructed to industry-leading efficiency and reliability standards, and capable of supporting high energy density IT applications. The project is 100% long-term leased to a Fortune 100 hyperscale tenant with occupancy expected to begin in 1H 2025. Supported by Blue Owl's investment and developed by Crusoe, the project will incorporate an innovative DC design, sharpened to support cutting-edge artificial intelligence ("AI") workloads at an industry-leading scale. The design will be optimized for direct-to-chip liquid cooling and will also accommodate air cooling. At completion, the data center will be able to operate up to 100,000 GPUs on a single integrated network fabric, advancing the frontier of data center design and scale for AI training and inference workloads.

"Crusoe's leadership team has positioned the Lancium Clean Campus to capitalize on unprecedented growth from high energy density IT applications, and the JV with Blue Owl and Primary Infrastructure only further supports those efforts," said Mayo. "We look forward to continuing to support the JV and are excited to have served as the exclusive advisor in this transaction."

The 200+ MW capacity will be delivered in 2025 on a substantially accelerated construction timeline. This speed is achieved through Crusoe's innovative design strategies and intimate familiarity with the GPUs and other integral AI hardware that will outfit the site.

The project is expected to contribute nearly $1 billion to the local economy over the next 20 years, as estimated by the Development Corporation of Abilene1, and will focus on local hiring, creating almost a hundred local jobs. Combined with its limited environmental impact due to the proposed use of renewable energy, this project reflects Crusoe's commitment to lead the industry in sustainability and community stewardship.